Social capital as a tool for microenterprise development: A focus on Latin America

Microenterprise development discourse has identified the goals of market success and empowerment. In working toward one or both of these goals, projects have been characterized by the identification of a series of inputs to improve project performance, including training, technological innovation and credit. The most recent input to be identified is a resource that springs from social relationships: social capital. This project explores the social capital and microenterprise literature in order to extract mutually relevant concepts and organize them into thematic categories. These categories are then explored further through two examples that illustrate how social capital can contribute to microenterprise development: a textile producer's cooperative from Ecuador and a coffee producer's cooperative from Guatemala. The findings from the literature review and the illustrative examples are integrated into a model that will facilitate a more evidence-based and critical usage of social capital in development research and practice.